Tag: young people

Words Of Advice!

I’m an optimist.  However, I must admit ever since the Millennials began drifting out of the universities and into the general population, I’m losing my girlish laughter.  Seriously! These people are difficult to deal with.  It’s like playing chess with a pigeon — they don’t actually understand the game, but they strut around the board as if they invented it.  Lighten up, folks!  Here’s some advice.  It might not make your lives any better, but it’ll certainly help all the people around you get on with theirs.

1 — Nobody in the real world gives a damn about your feelings.  Being over-sensitive about everything doesn’t mean you’re a unique, complicated or interesting person; it means you’re an emotional train wreck who doesn’t have any coping skills.

2 — I think it’s wonderful that you want a totally cool job that utilizes your intelligence, ability and years of education.  Unfortunately, your diploma in Gender Studies or any of the other 1001 bullshit degrees out there didn’t provide you with any marketable skills.  To get a job (cool or otherwise) you need MARKETABLE SKILLS, so either get some or learn how to make coffee.

3 — If you live in the Western World, you’re already part of the 1%.  Nobody but you — and your Instagram buddies — thinks you’re ill used, abused or downtrodden.  And, like it or not, you’re not oppressed, so give it a rest.  You have the bounty of this very, very wealthy society at your disposal.  Bitching about that is kinda counterproductive.

4 — Just because you’re offended doesn’t mean you’re right.

5 — People who disagree with you are not assholes, morons, idiots, or Satan’s evil twin. They’re ordinary people who are just as smart, aware and informed as you think you are.

6 — The real world does not come with a safe space.  That’s a pretend game the universities made up so your parents wouldn’t sue them.

And finally:

7 — Even though he’s not on Twitter, read Copernicus: he has documented proof you’re not the centre of the universe.

Why Young People Are Grouchy!

bored

After years of research, I’ve discovered why young people are grouchy all the time.  It’s pretty simple, really.  They’re bored out of their skulls.  The problem is, despite the entire 21st century lying at their feet like a cornucopia of earthly delights, they have so many politically correct rules of engagement that they’re scared to touch it.  Let me explain.

They can’t play games or even watch them.  There is a myth that young people like board games, but I think this is just spin (“lie” is such a hard word.)  Think about it!  Games are, by definition, competition, and when you have competition you have winners and – OMG – losers.  This is the Anti-Christ of the 21st century.  If an activity isn’t win/win, it just doesn’t happen.

They can’t watch television — except The Handmaid’s Tale.  The trigger warnings in Game of Thrones alone would fill an encyclopedia (that’s Google for old people.)  Even the blandest of the bland, the antique sitcom, Friends — a program so inoffensive it can’t even be called vanilla (that suggests way too much flavour) is a minefield of politically incorrect thought.  Nope, TV is out!

They can’t go to the zoo.  Animals in captivity?  That’s just crazy talk.

They can’t go to a museum.  If the single statue of some dead guy is offensive, a whole building full of history could cause apoplectic shock.

They can’t read books published before 1980.  In a time when To Kill a Mockingbird has been censored, Huck Finn rewritten and Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Screw banned, we’re not many days away from politically correct mobs ransacking libraries and burning the books in the streets.  Sad as it may seem, Fahrenheit 451 isn’t fiction anymore; it’s a training manual.  So reading is a no-no!

They can’t go to the movies.  Here is an industry that has, on several occasions, confessed that it is a whitewashing, cultural appropriating, racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, anti-Latino, anti-Asian, anti-Muslim monopoly, controlled by misogynistic old white men.  What’s left?  Michael Moore’s “Ain’t It Awful?” documentaries — and even the politically correct are fed up with that guy.

They can’t dine out unless the restaurant grows its own organic food in a hydroponic biosphere in the back garden.  Even quinoa and avocados, the meat and potatoes of contemporary life, are suspect.  The carbon footprint that brings ancient grains and Aztec fruit to the modern table is just too deep to be tolerated.

And, of course, the super biggie:

They can’t flirt.  Don’t even go there!

And that, boys and girls, is why young people are so 24/7 bitchy!

This Computer Generation

generations

I have discovered the real reason that we have children and encourage our children to have children.

Last week, one of my lights went out.  A blue dot, it had glowed on a dusty, black molded plastic device on the corner of my desk.  Normally, since you can land airplanes from the various indicator lights shining around my house, I wouldn’t have cared or even noticed.  However, when this little bastard committed suicide, he took the Internet with him.

[Just so you know, I’m not a Luddite.  I love technology.  But I’m a Techno-dinosaur.  I don’t know a bit from a byte from a bot, and I don’t trust any of them because of my ignorance.  Techno-answers elude me because I don’t know the right techno-questions to ask.  In fact, I don’t even speak the language and — full disclosure — I don’t actually think in techno-terms.  Technology and I are like two pages of a closed book: we touch at every point of our existence, but we’re completely different.]

Anyway …  losing the Internet, without warning, was like suddenly being struck blind.  The panic was palpable.  I started thrashing around, waving my arms in the cyber darkness — propelling the mouse and hitting keys like a Rhesus monkey.  “Reboot!  Reboot!  They always tell you to reboot.”  I rebooted.  I swore.  I swore some more.  I started  randomly turning thing off and turning them back on again.  I unplugged.  I plugged.  I reversed cables.  I disconnected various wires and stuck them into a variety of other holes.  I realized I couldn’t remember what went where, anymore.  I unleashed a torrent of obscenities that is still hanging over the Pacific Ocean like a radioactive cloud.  I stopped.  I roared in frustration.  I wept.  I went for a walk.  I came back, sat down and looked at the dismantled mess on my desk.  This went on for three days and on the fourth day, I reached for the comfort of 2Oth century technology and telephoned my niece — my great-niece actually — on a land line.

Like Ground Control to Apollo 13, she methodically guided me through the reassembly process, calmly reconstructed the disaster, assessed the situation and isolated the problem.

“No, Uncle Bill!  The Internet doesn’t hate you; it’s your modem.”
“No, you can’t fix it.  You need to buy a new one.  Why don’t you get a good one this time?”
Then, she spoke gibberish for a minute and a half, and I dutifully wrote it all down.

The next day, I went to the retail techno-scoundrels with the note from my niece.  They pillaged my credit card and gave me a box large enough to hide their treachery.  Inside, there was a new black molded plastic device and a pamphlet of illustrated instruction.  I followed the instructions to the letter (picture?) plugged it in and — a miracle happened!  There was a little green light, shining bravely in the sun-drenched summer afternoon, and I knew I had been delivered.  I sank to my knees in praise of all that I know to be holy and thanked the Almighty that my sisters had indeed gone forth and multiplied.  Now I understand that, without a second, third and even a fourth generation to guide us through the labyrinth of technology, it would run amok.

And from there, it would only be a matter of time before we found ourselves up to our elbows in Terminators.